Baldur's Gate EE - Dispute is Over Unpaid Royalties?

July 11th, 2013, 09:29

We all know that Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition was pulled at Atari's request, but we never knew why. Thanks to Gamebanshee they have an industry source that requested to remain anonymous tell us why.

Two weeks ago we reported that Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition was pulled at Atari's request, and also noted that Atari was selling the title on Steam themselves. Now that we have been contacted by an industry source that requested to remain anonymous, we might know why.

Apparently Beamdog hasn't paid Atari the royalties that they were owed, which led the publisher to ask them to pull the title from their services, and delay both Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition's patch and the release of the sequel's remastering.

However it has to be noted that the circumstances surrounding this aren't clear at all. Something like Atari informally telling Beamdog that they could delay payment is hardly out of the realm of possibilities, but right now we have no elements to assume that, and this amounts to pure speculation.

We contacted both Atari and Beamdog to comment on this. While, as of this posting, Atari hasn't gotten back to us, Beamdog president Trent Oster reiterated that they're working with Atari to resolve this dispute, though he wouldn't confirm or deny whether what we heard from our source is true.

We'll let you know if we hear more news, and I'm certain I echo the sentiments of the GameBanshee staff at large when I say my hope is that this gets resolved sooner rather than later.